What The Frak Nintendo!? What Is This Rubbish?

Sometimes patents are filed that whips the world into a frenzy over a potential new bit of technology.

Remember how excited we all were when Nintendo patented the Vitality Sensor? No?

What about when Microsoft patented that controller that read the grip of the player, that was incredible, wasn’t it?

Well now Nintendo are back to the fore with their innovative ‘Stick Man Saviour’ mechanic, that was uncovered recently.

So, to explain this image it essentially allows the player to use the Wii Remote to drag an item from the main television screen and drop it in the WiiU Tablet Controller’s screen. Because obviously what you really want from a game is to take stuff off of the large screen and drop it onto a smaller screen, using a secondary controller. Bizzarre.

The ONLY feasible use for this that would actually be of any benefit would be when taking the whole image from the TV to the tablet controller when the main screen is to be used to watch re-runs of Bargain Hunt or something. If it was, as the following image suggests, to be used in a gaming gimmick, well frankly I’d be very disappointed.

No Nintendo! Bad Nintendo! Concentrate on keeping the game on the main screen as much as possible, you can make as much use of the NFC technology you are (supposedly) cramming into the controller, but do not consider using this as a mechanic.

Like this:

2 thoughts on “What The Frak Nintendo!? What Is This Rubbish?”

How about transferring items between characters,
What about adding items to an inventory, or removing from inventory.
What about transferring an in game item from your account to your friends (either local or online)
What about intalling an app on your tablet
What about picking up an in game book and putting it on screen to read
What about being able to put an item on your handheld screen that you don’t want other players to be able to see (card games/scrabble type games?)
What about using it to substitute players on and off the pitch (sports games)
Picking up a small intricate item to interact with.

And that’s just off the top of my head. I imagine devs will find a lot of use for this. Nintendo have historically made great use of multi screens, (game and watch, DS) people weren’t convinced then and you are still not now?

I am in no way criticising the idea of moving objects between the tablet and the screen, it’s the erroneous use of the Wii Remote to enable it that bothers me. As the tablet is essentially a two handed device it would – in single player situations – require putting down the controller, or at least juggling a little before it was possible, all of which would be just as feasible utilising the tablet controller itself, flicking items towards the screen, other tablets to transfer items etc… It just seems to be an odd step to take, adding in an unnecessary input device. Obviously it would have more use in a multi player set-up, given that the intention is for some multi-player games to feature the ‘main’ player on the tablet and others on Wii Remotes, and in that sense it would be useful, but even then, I hate that concept. It’s like the ‘co-op’ on Mario Galaxy…

“Oh, yeah, you can play too… just click on those things to collect them for me. What? Oh no, you can’t actually play…”

While Nintendo have a good record with dual screen concepts – and hell I’ve plonked out enough money to prove I agree – I fear that this is more of a move towards secondary peripheral devices, rather than working out how to enable more tablets to be used (remembering that the initial plan was to never sell secondary tablets, and to only have one per machine) allowing folks to get together for a more social experience. Instead it seems that perhaps the primary core focus for multi-player will be on-line gaming, with each gamer on their tablet, but again that’s a step away from the Nintendo way. If you get what I’m saying.